<br />Let's say I want to say "drenched".<br /><br />I know the verb for "to drench" is madefacere.<br /><br />How would I turn this verb, madefacere, into an adjective?<br /><br /><br />For example, the French verb is tremper. One could adjectivize this by making it trempé(e). Is it possible to do something similar in Latin?<br /><br />

A lot of the time you just take the past participle / 4th principal part. <br /><br />Facere - to make / Factus, -a, -um - made<br />Tacere - to be silent / Tacitus, -a, -um - silent<br />Madefacere - to drench / Madefactus, -a, -um - drenched<br /><br />And it just so turns out that we do have an adjective for this (courtesy of Words):<br />madefactus, madefacta, madefactum ADJ <br />wet, soaked, stained;<br /><br />Its literal meaning is "made wet" but hence we can translate it as "soaked/drenched/soggy/wet/etc".<br />

Last edited by benissimus on Fri Oct 28, 2005 4:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

<br />Ah, the mysterious 4th principle part. The only thing I know about it is that it is the Perfect Passive Participle. What it's used for hasn't been covered yet. I guess that'll come much later. So that means that the 4th principle part of every verb is also the masculine adjective, and all we need to do is adjust the gender as necessary?<br /><br />The verb Madefacere is in my dictionary, but there is no mention of the adjective forms, Madefactus, -a, -um. Waaah! My dictionary is so lacking... :'(<br /><br />So for the soggy or drenched cat, I can say "feles madefacta"!<br /><br />Yes, I seem to be fixated on this wet cat...<br /><br />

It's part adjective part verb. A bit like french..."cette viande est bien cuite" - Notice the e on the end of the participle to agree with la viande. (hah I didn't know you also to have made a reference to french! I'll live it there anyhow)<br /><br />The participles can be adjectives in "Tarpeia apud suos liberos interfectos sedet..." or with the verb esse to form the perfect/pluperfect/future perfect passive. <br /><br />As, "Tarpeia apud suos liberos qui interfecti sunt"<br />- who were slain<br />"...interfecti erant" <br />-who had been slain<br />"...interfecti erunt"<br />- who will have been slain (but that wouldn't really make sense heh)

I will resist the temptation to say rude things about cats!!! When you start reading more real Latin literature you will see participles used all the time - they are very important and probably deserve a tutorial (but I don't think I am at the stage of being able to write one yet). Oddly enough a lot of the Latin textbooks seem to skip past them rather lightly (although Allen & Greenough has a reasonable section on them). Latin uses them a lot where we seem to use a phrase in English.

[quote author=Carola link=board=3;threadid=735;start=0#7161 date=1064790927]<br />Oddly enough a lot of the Latin textbooks seem to skip past them rather lightly (although Allen & Greenough has a reasonable section on them).[/quote]<br /><br />Why do you think textbooks gloss over these participles when they're so ubiquitous in Latin literature? I will have to take a look at A&G one of these days.<br /><br />

Well, they do tend to pack all of the different forms of the participles into a single chapter. I don't know if they necessarily are that hard, except in the multiple uses of the perfect passive... and people are often extremely weak in their English grammar concerning participles (among other things).

[quote author=benissimus link=board=3;threadid=735;start=0#7188 date=1064808727]<br />and people are often extremely weak in their English grammar concerning participles (among other things).<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Boy is that the truth! I think I know more about French grammar than I do English grammar. I can't explain anything about English grammar to anyone, at least not in the correct grammatical lingo ... I can't even tell you what an English participle is ... I just speak the language. ::)<br /><br />

we don't call them participles in english... they are "gerunds" (not that anyone knows that except english teachers... lol). same thing, though, as far as I know. <br /><br />I don't think it's really necessary to know the correct terminology for one's own language, as long as one knows how to use it correctly ;)<br /><br /><br /><br />

[quote author=klewlis link=board=3;threadid=735;start=0#7199 date=1064811283]<br />we don't call them participles in english... they are "gerunds" (not that anyone knows that except english teachers... lol). same thing, though, as far as I know. <br /><br />Most younger English teachers don't know their higher grammar <br /><br />I don't think it's really necessary to know the correct terminology for one's own language, as long as one knows how to use it correctly <br /><br />But most don't <br /><br /><br />[/quote]

There you go, I know most of the terminology and I'm not even an english teacher... and I'm only 25. ;)<br /><br />But I had an excellent, wonderful, demanding english teacher in a private school as a child.

No, no, gerunds and participles are different. Take the sentence:<br /><br />Dodging flying crockery hurled by one's spouse can be tricky.<br /><br />We have two -ing forms and one -ed form. <br /><br />Dodging functions as a noun and is the subject of can but is also a verb because it has an object (flying crockery). It is therefore a gerund. <br /><br />Flying is an adjective, describing a noun (crockery). It is an active participle: the crockery is flying.<br /><br />Hurled is another adjective also describing a noun (crockery) but it is passive (somebody is hurling the crockery, the crockery is being hurled) and is followed by an participle phrase (by one's spouse) like a passive verb. <br /><br />The particple in -ing (somewhat misleadingly called the present participle despite the fact that it can be used whether the verb is referring to past present or future, or no particular time at all) is also used to show continuous aspect, while the participle ending in -ed (again the name past participle is misleading because it can be used whatever time the verb is referring to) is used to show perfect aspect or passive mood.<br /><br />The trouble is the traditional names for our grammatical forms, particularly verb forms, are misleading because they are based on the names of Latin or Romance language verb forms and the English verb works differently.<br />

<br />Thanks for the English lesson. It makes sense when you explain it, but I can tell you that English was never taught that way in any of my classes. I've even discovered that ESL students can better describe/explain English grammar to me than I can to describe/explain it to them!<br /><br />After reading your explanation, I'm beginning to think Latin grammar is easier! ;D<br /><br /><br />

I have often told people who were trying to decide if they should take Latin that Latin is probably the most regular and orderly language that ever was, but is only so because it is dictated by a humongous number of grammatical rules, which must all be memorized (well I don't talk like that, but you get the gist )

Wow, Bingley! That's awesome. The closest I've ever managed to get to understanding the difference between a gerund and a participle was that they were often both -ing words, but that the gerund was an -ing noun, and the participle was an -ing verb...and I am majoring in English! ;D

<br />I was reading ahead in M&F Unit4 and stumbled upon this on Page 64. I guess I was just getting ahead of myself. <br /><br />In the perfect system the passive is a compound form; that is, it is composed of two words: a participle and a helping verb, sum. The perfect passive participle is the fourth principal part of most verbs. This form, while given in the vocabularies with a -us ending (optatus), is, in fact, an adjective and so can be declined. It might be written optatus, -a, -um just like the adjective magnus, -a, -um.<br />

Basically the subjunctive is not known by many english teachers because of its rarity in English nowadays despite its being used on many occasions in Shakespeare. They just class "if I be" etc as "archaic" then discard it as they are not capable of elaborating. I have asked teachers many times. They assume kids to not know but they are unknowingly showing themselves to be stupid.